In the morning I am sharing Grandpa's Christmas Message by the Walton's. I wrote out the words so they could take them home if they wanted. Here they are for you:
Grandpa’s
Christmas Message (Read by Will Geer on "The Waltons' Christmas" Album) What is Christmas? It is a time when some of your dreams
come true. Every year it rolls around
and takes you by surprise some of the time, especially when you’re as close to
100 years old as I am. You think…it
can’t be time for another one, but there it is with all its hope and joy and
the promise of the wishes granted. I bet
you wonder what I wish for. What could
an old man wish for? Maybe you think I
would wish to be young again. I don’t
want that. Being young is a painful
thing. Being young and in love to boot,
which most young people are, is even more agony. I’ll tell you what I wish. I’d wish for the power to return some of the
love that’s been given me. I’d wish the
time and place for all that giving could be commemorated like the heart carved
on the tree around your Grandmother’s and my initials. I wish too for more days to my life. Time…time to give to children some of the
beauty of this Earth that has been revealed to me.
A drop of water is a wondrous thing. A spade full of earth is a kingdom in
itself. A cloud is worth watching as it
passes from one horizon to another. A
bird building its nest is as wondrous as men building the Pyramids, and any
green thing that grows is proof that God exists. It all comes into focus at Christmas. It is a tender time. We grow cautious because we open ourselves to
love. We exchange gifts, but what those
presents really say is “I love you.” It
makes some folks uncomfortable to say or hear these words. Maybe it’s because they’ve never learned the secret
of the giving heart. There are more
takers than givers in the world. People,
communities, even countries spending their time grubbing and rooting for the
goods of this earth like pigs after acorns in the fall of the year. This is a country with a giving heart and I
pray it will always be so. It’s a good
country and it’s part of our strength, something that we brought with us as
pioneers that we can share with the fellow who is down on his luck, with those
who suffered calamities: with the loss of their homes or land or their hope.
This is a family with a giving heart. You children may squabble and bicker among
yourselves but you’ve been taught to love and to give, and that’s the greatest
present your Momma and Daddy could have given you. So take pleasure in the trappings of
Christmas. Be merry, like the songs
say. Revel in the tinsel and the glitter
and the sparkle and sing the old songs for all the joy that’s in them and the
memories they bring back. But to touch
the real Christmas, to feel the true spirit of the season, look to your own
heart and find all the secret treasures that are there to give.
There is one wish that I make every year. I never said it out loud before, but I’ll
tell it to you now. I wish for all the
seasons I have known, endlessly to come and go; the dogwood spring, the
watermelon summer, the russet and gold of autumn. I wish for Christmas to come again and for
each of us to be here again next year at this time…together, safe, warm and
loved as we are at this moment.
Merry Christmas!
